How do I match my resume to a job description?

Start with the posting's required skills and make sure every one you genuinely have appears on your resume, in the posting's own wording, inside a bullet that shows you using it. Then put the job title in your headline if it's the work you do, write acronyms both ways once, and date every role so your years can be counted. Nice-to-have skills come last. Run the matcher before and after: it shows which required skills are still missing and highlights them in the posting, so you're editing against a list rather than guessing.

How is the resume match score calculated?

From six weighted signals: hard skills (40%), recurring job keywords (15%), job title (15%), years of experience (15%), education (10%) and soft skills (5%). Required skills count in full and nice-to-have skills count half. If a posting doesn't mention something, such as a degree, that signal is left out and the others are reweighted, so you're never given free points or docked for something the employer didn't ask for. The weights are published on this page and are the ones the code uses.

Should I apply if I don't meet all the requirements?

Usually, yes. In a Harvard Business Review survey of more than 1,000 professionals, the most common reason people gave for not applying was believing they didn't meet the qualifications: 46% of men and 41% of women. Requirement lists are wish lists, and recruiters interview people who cover the required skills and some of the rest all the time. A reasonable rule: if you have the required skills and your match is in the 60s or higher, apply. If the missing items are marked required and they're core to the job, tailor or move on.

How many keywords from the job description should my resume include?

There's no magic number, and anyone who gives you one is guessing. Aim to cover every required skill you actually have, most of the nice-to-haves you have, and the job title. Use the posting's recurring terms where they describe your real work. Two to four mentions of an important skill is plenty; beyond that it starts reading as stuffing, to people and to match-scoring systems alike.

Is it OK to copy words from the job description into my resume?

Yes, for skill names, tools and the terms that describe work you've really done. That's what tailoring is: describing your experience in the vocabulary of the company that will read it. No for whole sentences, requirement lists or anything you can't back up in an interview. And never paste the posting in white text. An ATS extracts it as plain text, and the recruiter sees it under your name.

Why does the matcher say a skill I have is missing?

Almost always because your resume names it differently. The matcher looks for the posting's term and its common acronym, so "AWS" matches "Amazon Web Services", but it doesn't guess synonyms: "cloud data warehouse" won't match "Snowflake". That's deliberate, because a recruiter's ATS search doesn't guess either. Less often, the text sits somewhere a parser can't read, such as an image, a page header or a scanned PDF. Run the ATS resume checker to see the text your file really gives up.

How does it tell required skills from nice-to-have ones?

From the posting's own structure. Skills under headings like "Requirements", "Qualifications" or "What you'll need" are treated as required. Skills under "Preferred", "Nice to have" or "Bonus", and any line that says "a plus" or "preferred", count as nice-to-have. If a skill appears in both places, it's treated as required. If the posting has no headings at all, everything counts as required, which is the cautious reading.

How does the matcher count my years of experience?

It reads the date ranges on your roles, such as "Jan 2020 to Present" or "2018 to 2021", adds them up and counts overlapping roles once, so two jobs held at the same time don't double your total. "Present" runs to today. Roles without dates can't be counted, which is also true of many ATS, so give every role a month and year. The posting's requirement is read from phrases like "5+ years of experience".

What's the difference between a resume matcher and an ATS resume checker?

They answer different questions. An ATS resume checker asks whether software can read your file: columns, headers, images, fonts, sections. A matcher asks whether your resume says what one specific job asks for. You need a checker once, after you change your resume's layout. You need a matcher before every application, because every posting asks for something slightly different. Koluvu's matcher reads your PDF with the same extraction as its checker, so both work from the text an ATS would actually see.

Will a high match score get me an interview?

It improves your odds of being found and shortlisted; it can't promise an interview. No tool's score is the number a recruiter sees, because recruiters search, filter and read. What a strong match does guarantee is that when someone searches the ATS for the skills in their own posting, your resume comes up, and the first lines they read describe the job they're hiring for.

Does it work for any job or industry?

Yes, and it works best when the posting names concrete skills, tools or certifications, which most professional, technical and healthcare roles do. For postings that are mostly soft skills and duties, the score leans more on the job title and the posting's recurring terms, and signals the posting doesn't mention are left out rather than scored.

Is the resume matcher free?

Yes. The matcher is free with a Koluvu account, with no limit on how many resumes or job descriptions you compare and no credit card. The score, every suggestion, the keyword lists and the marked-up posting are all included.

Is my resume uploaded or stored?

No. Your resume is read and compared with the posting inside your browser tab, and neither the file nor the job description is sent to a Koluvu server. The only request the matcher makes is to check that you're signed in. Close the tab and the comparison is gone.

FreeMatch score · missing keywords · ranked fixes

Resume job description matcher. Know your fit before you apply.

Upload your resume and paste the job description. You get a match score out of 100, every skill and keyword the posting asks for marked found or missing, and a ranked list of what to change. The comparison runs in your browser, so your resume never leaves your device.

Results in secondsRequired vs nice-to-have skillsFree account

Match your resume to a jobScored in your browser

1Your resumeDrop your resume herePDF, up to 8 MB

2The job descriptionRequired

Add your resume and paste the job description to run the match.

6
Match signals, weights published: 2
Skill tiers: required and nice-to-have: 0
Files uploaded to our servers

Reads your PDF with the same extraction as Koluvu’s ATS resume checker, so it compares the text an applicant tracking system would actually see.

What a resume matcher does

It reads the posting the way a recruiter searches it, then checks your resume for each thing it finds.

A resume job description matcher compares the text of your resume with the text of one job posting and tells you how much of what the employer asked for your resume actually says. It doesn't judge whether you can do the job. It measures whether the evidence is on the page, in words a recruiter's search and an ATS ranking will recognize.

That difference decides more applications than most people realize. Hiring teams rarely read every application in the order it arrived. They screen on knockout questions, search the ATS for the skills they need, and sort by fit. A data engineer with five years of Snowflake who wrote "cloud data warehouse" doesn't come up in a search for Snowflake. The matcher finds those gaps while you can still fix them.

What you get back

A match score out of 100, broken into six signals
Every required and nice-to-have skill, marked found or missing
The posting itself, highlighted term by term against your resume
A ranked list of edits, most valuable first

Match my resume

Why the match matters

Recruiters don't read every application. They search for the job they wrote.

What the research says about how fit gets decided, and three pieces of advice worth ignoring. Every number links to its source.

88%of employers using an ATS: believe it filters out qualified candidates because they don't match the exact criteria in the job description. The wording on your resume is doing more screening than your experience is.Source: Harvard Business School and Accenture, Hidden Workers (n=2,275 executives)
244applications per job: on Greenhouse in 2025, up from 116 in 2022. At that volume, recruiters search and sort rather than read, and a match is what gets you sorted near the top.Source: Greenhouse, 2026 Recruiting Benchmark Report
19%of US hiring managers: let software screen candidates out before a human looks. For everyone else, the machine doesn't reject you; a person searching for the posting's keywords simply doesn't find you.Source: Resume Genius, 2026 Hiring Insights Report (n=1,000)
46%of men, and 41% of women: who skipped a job said the main reason was believing they didn't meet the qualifications. It was the top answer by far. Many of them were wrong about what the list required.Source: Tara Sophia Mohr, Harvard Business Review, 2014 (n=1,000+)

Myth

“Only apply if you meet 100% of the requirements.”

Reality

Requirement lists are wish lists, usually assembled from several people's priorities. Recruiters interview candidates who cover the required skills and part of the rest all the time. If your match is in the 60s or better and the gaps are nice-to-haves, apply.

Myth

“Paste the job description in white text and you'll beat the ATS.”

Reality

An ATS extracts text, not colors. Your hidden paragraph lands in the parsed record in plain black type, right under your name, where the recruiter reading it sees a copied job description. It's one of the few things that gets a resume rejected on sight.

Myth

“A higher match score always means a better resume.”

Reality

The score measures coverage, not quality. Repeat every keyword five times and any matcher will reward you, and the person deciding will read a keyword list. Cover the required skills, the title and the posting's language, used where it's true, then stop.

How the match score is calculated

Six signals, weighted the way hiring teams screen.

Most match rates are a single percentage with no explanation. This one shows its working. If the posting doesn't mention a signal, such as a degree, that signal drops out and the rest are reweighted, so you're never handed free points or docked for something nobody asked for.

Hard skills40%: The tools, technologies, methods and certifications the posting names. Required skills count in full and nice-to-haves count half. When the posting offers a choice, like "Looker or Tableau", having either one covers it.
Job keywords15%: Words the posting keeps coming back to that aren't named skills, like "stakeholders", "forecasting" or "compliance". They say what the job is really about.
Job title15%: Whether the exact title appears on your resume, and whether it's near the top. Title is the first field most recruiters search.
Years of experience15%: The years the posting asks for, against the years your dated roles add up to. Overlapping roles are counted once, not twice.
Education10%: The lowest degree the posting accepts against the highest one on your resume. "Bachelor's or Master's" means a bachelor's is enough.
Soft skills5%: Communication, leadership and the rest. Weighted lightly on purpose: nearly every posting lists them, and recruiters don't search for them.

What is a good resume match score?

60 makes you competitive. 80 makes you a strong match. Don’t chase 100.

80 to 100Strong match
Your resume says what the posting asks for. Clear any high-priority suggestions and apply. The first applications get read first.
60 to 79Good match
Competitive. Usually two or three missing skills, or a title that doesn't match the posting's. Ten minutes of honest edits.
40 to 59Partial match
Either real gaps, or real experience described in different words. The keyword list tells you which. Rewrite what's true.
Below 40Weak match
The resume and the job describe different work. Either this role isn't the fit, or the resume was written for another one.

Match scores aren’t comparable across tools, and no tool’s score is what a recruiter sees. It measures whether your resume will be found and understood for this job, which is the part you control.

Resume keyword matcher

The job description, marked up against your resume.

A score tells you how far off you are. The marked-up posting tells you where. Every skill and recurring term the matcher counts is highlighted in the job description itself, found in your resume or missing from it, so you read the gaps in context instead of in a list.

Looker isn't flagged: the posting accepts Looker or Tableau, and the resume has Tableau.
Missing dbt costs more than missing Airflow, because dbt is required and Airflow is nice-to-have.
"5+ years" is checked against the dates on your roles, not highlighted as a keyword.

Senior Data AnalystFoundMissing

Requirements

5+ years of experience in analytics

Expert SQL and Python; experience with Looker or Tableau

Build dashboards and define metrics with stakeholders

Hands-on with dbt and Snowflake

Nice to have

Airflow, A/B testing

Example report · match 71 · good match

How to tailor your resume to a job description

Seven rules for tailoring that recruiters won't see through.

Tailoring isn't rewriting your resume for every job. It's making sure the experience you already have is described in the words this employer uses, in the places they look. These are the edits that move a match score honestly.

Find my gaps firstFree · scored in your browser

01
Close the required gaps first
One missing required skill costs more than three missing nice-to-haves. Work the list top down, and skip any skill you don't actually have.
02
Use the posting's words when they're true
If the posting says "customer success" and you wrote "account management" for the same work, switch to theirs. ATS search is literal, and recruiters search in the words of their own job description.
03
Put each skill where the work happened
A skill in a list is a claim. The same skill in a bullet under the role where you used it, with a result, is evidence. Recruiters trust it more, and many ATS rank it higher.
04
Write acronyms both ways, once
Some recruiters search "SEO", others "search engine optimization". Write "Search Engine Optimization (SEO)" once and both searches find you.
05
Lead with the title they're hiring for
Put the posting's title in your headline when it's the job you do. If your employer used an internal title for the same work, keep it on the role and lead with the market title.
06
Date every role, month and year
Year requirements are often checked against your dates, not your summary. "Mar 2021 to Present" gets counted. A role with no dates doesn't.
07
Never add what you can't defend
A matcher can't tell a real skill from a pasted one. An interviewer can, in one follow-up question. Every keyword you add should survive it.

How to compare your resume to a job description in four steps

Upload, paste, read, edit. Then do it again for the next posting, because every job asks for something slightly different.

01
Upload your resume
A text-based PDF. It's read in your browser with the same extraction Koluvu's ATS resume checker uses, so the matcher compares the text an ATS would actually see.
Instant
02
Paste the job description
The whole posting, requirements included, and the job title if you have it. The requirements section is where most of the score comes from.
One minute
03
Read your match
A score out of 100, all six signals broken down, the posting marked up found and missing, and suggestions ranked by what they're worth.
Seconds
04
Edit and run it again
Make the changes that are true, export a fresh PDF and rerun. There's no limit, so check each version against each job you apply to.
Unlimited

Which tool when

Resume matcher, ATS checker or ChatGPT: which one you need

They get lumped together, but they answer different questions. Most job seekers need the first two, and at different moments.

	Resume job description matcher	ATS resume checker	ChatGPT or another chatbot
The question it answers	Does my resume say what this job asks for?	Can an ATS read my file at all?	How could this bullet be worded better?
Needs a job description	Yes, it's the whole comparison	Optional	Optional
Checks columns, headers and images	No	Yes	No, it only sees pasted text
Same resume, same score every time	Yes, weights published	Yes, weights published	No
When to use it	Before every application	After any change to your layout	When rewriting a line

If you haven’t checked that your resume parses cleanly, start with the free ATS resume checker. A perfect match can’t help a file the ATS can’t read. Looking for roles to match against? Try jobs matching your resume.

Then stop doing this by hand

The matcher tailors one application. The agent tailors every one.

Tailoring well takes twenty minutes a posting, which is why most people stop doing it by the tenth application. Koluvu’s agent watches 100,000+ company career pages, and for each matching role it rewrites your resume against that posting, answers the screening questions and submits, usually within minutes of the job going live.

Start free How the agent works

A resume rebuilt against every posting it applies to
Only your real experience, reworded in the posting's language
Review each application before it sends, or run on autopilot
10 free auto-applies included, no card required

Questions people actually ask

Resume and job description matching, answered

What a good match score is, whether to apply without every requirement, how many keywords to use, and what happens to your resume.

A resume job description matcher is a tool that compares your resume with a specific job posting and reports how closely they line up. Koluvu's matcher pulls the skills, title, years of experience, education and recurring terms out of the posting, checks your resume for each one, and gives you a match score out of 100 with a ranked list of what to change. It measures what your resume says, not whether you're qualified, which is exactly the part a recruiter's search sees first.

Before you hit submit

Find out what the posting wants that your resume doesn’t say.

Free with a Koluvu account. Scored right here, in your browser.

Match my resume free

PDF · any job description · unlimited matches

Resume job description matcher. Know your fit before you apply.

It reads the posting the way a recruiter searches it, then checks your resume for each thing it finds.

Recruiters don't read every application. They search for the job they wrote.

Six signals, weighted the way hiring teams screen.

60 makes you competitive. 80 makes you a strong match. Don’t chase 100.

The job description, marked up against your resume.

Seven rules for tailoring that recruiters won't see through.

Close the required gaps first

Use the posting's words when they're true

Put each skill where the work happened

Write acronyms both ways, once

Lead with the title they're hiring for

Date every role, month and year

Never add what you can't defend

How to compare your resume to a job description in four steps

Upload your resume

Paste the job description

Read your match

Edit and run it again

Resume matcher, ATS checker or ChatGPT: which one you need

The matcher tailors one application. The agent tailors every one.

Resume and job description matching, answered

What is a resume job description matcher?

How do I match my resume to a job description?

How is the resume match score calculated?

What is a good resume match score?

Should I apply if I don't meet all the requirements?

How many keywords from the job description should my resume include?

Is it OK to copy words from the job description into my resume?

Why does the matcher say a skill I have is missing?

How does it tell required skills from nice-to-have ones?

How does the matcher count my years of experience?

What's the difference between a resume matcher and an ATS resume checker?

Will a high match score get me an interview?

Does it work for any job or industry?

Is the resume matcher free?

Is my resume uploaded or stored?

Find out what the posting wants that your resume doesn’t say.